The Only Water in the Forest
by wordslinger
Summary: River Song waxes angst about Eleven.


_**Minimalist Author's Note: Try not to apply this narrative to any specific point in anyone's timestream. It's unimportant. This is less of a story and more of a character study. Lengthy Author's Note to follow.**_

_**I highly recommend you get on YouTube and listen to The Ghosts We Knew by Mumford and Sons. It was a very heavy influence on this short, and my mindset while writing it. The quotes preceding and ending the story are from the same song.**_

* * *

"_The ghosts the we knew_

_made us black and all blue_

_and we'll live a long life"_

* * *

You love him. You love him, and he's in love with your mother. Hopelessly so. It's obvious. And it hurts. Why shouldn't he love her? Her's was the first face he saw. Amelia Pond. The Girl Who Waited. How can you follow that up? Impossible.

Never mind that you actually met him first. Technically. In his time stream anyway. The first time he meets _you_ is the last time you see _him_. Even in the afterlife he gives you on that amazing hard drive, you still manage to create a party of four for yourself where you're with them but not really a part of them. Deprogramming is hard. Never let him see the damage.

Sometimes you think of what you are to him. Perhaps a shadow he sees before turning the corner to find the ultimate prize - a mere peripheral of the real work of art. You save his life because you once took it. You're his wife, but he's _not_your husband. Not really. The marriage is something different to you than it is to him.

Impressing him is necessary because when you know you're going to murder someone, it would be dreadful not to. You were supposed to kill him, not fall in love with him and poke at the big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

Running is second nature to you. You run after him, and away from your past. One impossible to catch, the other impossible to avoid. In the darkest shadows of your heart you know you can't ever escape the suit. Honestly, you would kill him anyway. It's the only way to keep him close to you. To keep him in your life. He kills you too. Every time his eyes come to rest on your mother it kills you. It's a living death.

You like to think he saves you in The Library because he loves you and just can't bear to let you go (because that's what you do for him. Rewrite everything just. for. him.), but you know it's a lie. He doesn't know you at all, then. His desire to save you is a compulsion to solve the puzzle - his need to be incredibly clever. And oh, was he clever. More clever than you, but you'll never tell him so. It's tough to compliment a man who pretends to not see what it all really means to you. Of course, he does it to spare you pain. The Doctor isn't cruel. He knows he can never give you what you want. But he gives you just enough to keep you calling when you need him. Even after your parents are gone. He can't return your feelings, but he does his best because he can't say goodbye, either.

You're Melody Pond. The child of the TARDIS. Amelia's daughter. And you're in love with the oncoming storm. A storm that has both made you strong, and ripped you to pieces.

* * *

"_The ghosts we knew_

_Will flicker from view,_

_And we'll live a long life"_

* * *

_**Lengthy Author's Note: Thanks for humoring me! If you're reading this I assume it's because you want to, so I won't ask for forgiveness for it's wordiness.**_

_**I didn't want to like Doctor Who. I needed another fandom like I needed a face tattoo. But alas. River Song intrigued me from the second she opened her helmet in The Library and smiled up at Ten to say the very first "Hello, Sweetie." I decided I liked her brash nature and her death made NO sense to me. Mostly because Moffat is a cruel bastard. Only after a rewatch, having finished The Angels Take Manhattan, could I fully appreciate wtf was thrown at me back in S4. I then had to understand her timeline. I never made it back from that obsession. Melody Pond is the most tragic character I've come across in a while (outside of The Doctor himself), and y'all know I love tragic shit. AnyWHO, I hope you enjoyed my interpretation of her pain. 2nd person is a style I very openly despise, and present tense is HARD. TENSES ARE HARD!**_

_**My amazing beta was BellaFlan: famous fic writer, and fellow Whovian.**_


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